Tag (aka Real Onigokko) (Sion Sono, 2015)

[Takuma]

I spoke about this before in the other thread, but this NEEDS its own thread now!

 

 

Real Onigokko (The Chasing Game) movie by Sono. Opens July 11.

- http://realonigokko.com/

 

No trailer or even pics available yet.

 

I've seen the first two films in the series. Both are quite alright, especially the second one (see

) (I have a soft spot for chase/running movies). The premise is kind fun: Sato wakes up in a parallel universe where everyone names Sato has been ordered to be captured an executed. And then he runs. A lot. Parts 3-5 were essentially direct-to-dvd stuff although they did have very brief theatrical run. They were all released back to back within a month or two.

 

Trailer:

sKqEhli7-GU

 

My only worry is that it's gonna be full of z-grade CGI blood again.

[OpiumKungFuCracker]

I'll watch Sion Sono do anything.

[Takuma]

Oh, and the tagline for Real Onigokko:

全国のJKの皆さん、あなたたちはちょっとふてぶてしいので、数を減らすことにします。

Roughly* translated "All the high school girls in the country, you've become a little bit too shameless! We've decided the reduce your amount"

Love it!

* I had to check ふてぶてしい from dictionary. I guess "shameless" would be more or less correct.

The poster is pretty terrible, though:

https://sketchesofcinema.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/realo.jpg

[One Armed Boxer]

According to the guys over at Twitch, it looks like this will be going under the English title of 'Tag' -

http://twitchfilm.com/2015/04/sono-sion-declares-war-on-schoolgirls-with-tag.html

[Takuma]

Review:

www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/07/01/films/film-reviews/sion-sono-back-buckets-blood-three-faced-heroine-tag/

[Takuma]

As I feared, this was pretty heavy on CGI crap. Not that most "cult film audiences" these days mind. You can feed them Asylum level shit and they'll swallow it as long as it's an Asian movie, as movies like Why Don't You Play in Hell prove. I just don't understand it...

It's such a shame, because we've got pretty outrageous little film here. So outrageous, that I hesitate to call it a bad one despite hating all the CGI blood (and the CGI guns). Some the ultra violent scenarios are absolutely terrific. There's also tons of high school girls, loads of panty shots, some nice practical effects especially towards the end (courtesy of Yoshihiro Nishimura) and a damn twisted storyline that should not be spoiled.

It's very different from the earlier Real onigokko films, though. Sono went completely his own way.

Oh, and the camerawork is fantastic a lot of time. Loads of aerial tracking shots. I don't even know how they managed to do some of those. Reminded me about The Evil Dead more than once. And the film's first third is damn scary, too.

Oh, and I don't think I saw a single male in the film until around 70 minute mark. By that time we've seen about 200 actors and all of them are women.

It's just such a shame about all the CGI...

[JimPV]

As I feared, this was pretty heavy on CGI crap. Not that most "cult film audiences" these days mind. You can feed them Asylum level shit and they'll swallow it...

It's such a shame, because we've got pretty outrageous little film here. So outrageous, that I hesitate to call it a bad one despite hating all the CGI blood (and the CGI guns).

CGI GUNS?! Wow, that is a new level of lazy.

"Thank God for computer graphics, 'cause now we can have guns in our movies. We could never do that before."

I just watched Nolan's Interstellar again last night and regardless of what you think of the film (I love it), the use of practical effects wherever possible is completely refreshing. As I understand it, Nolan saves CG for cases where one simply cannot achieve a visual any other way, which as it should be. It gives a much greater level of verisimilitude to the film - any film.

I think that all this scattershot use of CG is gonna burn itself out very soon. It's gonna look so dated as a film-making style (and it is a style) when viewed from a few decades perspective. A much more judicious, restrained use of the tech is the future of film-making. Let's hope so, at least!

[Takuma]

CGI GUNS?! Wow, that is a new level of lazy.

"Thank God for computer graphics, 'cause now we can have guns in our movies. We could never do that before."

Sorry, I was a half asleep when I wrote that. I meant the gun fire and bullets are CGI. The guns are probably made of plastic. They just look so much like children's toys...

Sogo Ishii's That's It had the exact same problem. Otherwise a pretty decent film until the ultra-fake gunplay anti-climax arrives.

I remember Kurando Mitsutake said that because of the strict gun laws Japanese filmmakers are unable to use real guns so this is what happens. It's come to the point that I'm wondering if I should stop watching new Japanese action films entirely...

[Takuma]

ok, I think I should soften my initial criticism on a little bit. I ended up seeing the film for the second time, this time with a friend, and a little bit drunk, and had quite a bit of good time.

I may have exaggerated the amount of CGI in my initial review. Yes, there are some really bad CGI effects which probably distracted me to the point that I missed some traditional effects that followed immediately after. And maybe I mistook a few quick cut practical effects for CGI because there was a rapid cut from CGI to a practical effect. My bad. Most of the blood and gore effects are actually old school Nishimura effects with no CGI in them, and some of them are just fantastic (e.g. some head explosions). Also, the second half of the film is essentially free of CGI.

Oh, and found out how the fantastic camerawork was done: with drones. It was actually written in the ending credits. That's how they managed to get all the difficult aerial tracking shots in difficult terrains. And did I mention some of the music is fantastic as well?

The film's also got some interesting criticism on the Japanese school girl culture, although this criticism pretty much comparable to the anti-violence message in Death Wish 3, and even the amount of panty shots in the film roughly equals to the number of punks killed by Charles Bronson.

So, if you manage to overlook the shitty CGI effects here and there, you've actually got a pretty outrageous movie to enjoy. I liked it quite a bit more on the second viewing when I was prepared for the bad parts.

 

 

btw, the film opens with a Universal logo! Has Universal begun to produce schoolgirl splatter films? Not quite! The connection is via Universal Music: the "image song" for the film is by a band called Glim Spanky. The song is so poor that Sono didn't even use it for the end credits; in fact, I can't find it anywhere in the film. It's also used for a new VoD miniseries called Real Onigokko Rising. The three episodes were directed by Hajime Ohata (Henge), Eisuke Naito (Let's Make the Teacher Have a Miscarriage Club) and Kayoko Asakura (It's a Beautiful Day). That's a damn interesting selection of directors if you ask me, even though the trailer doesn't look super good.

Site:
http://realonigokko.com/rising/

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUvlHRwowsM

There's a very angry, and very spoiling Tag review at Twitch.
- http://twitchfilm.com/2015/08/fantasia-2015-review-sono-sions-tag-sure-there-are-lots-of-japanese-girls-in-it-but.html

It's a fun opinion (which I don't agree with... in fact, I find it entirely incomprehensible considering what actually happens in the film), but I really can't recommend reading it until after you've seen the film. It spoils some of the film's best surprises that even the trailer didn't show.

 

 

 

Edited September 27, 2015 by Takuma

[FilmMomatic]

"Sorry, schoolgirls. You have all been too obnoxious so we are reducing your numbers!" A new Sion Sono film!

 

https://filmmomaticreviews.wordpress.com/2015/10/15/movie-review-tag-japanese-film-festival-2015/

 

Also visit my review site, like and follow on FaceBook (https://www.facebook.com/FilmMomatic) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/FilmMomatic) for more reviews!

[Takuma]

That's a good review, spoiler free and echoes my own thoughts (after the second viewing) although I didn't love it as much as you did.

 

The male actor's identity might be worth spoiling here because foreign audiences are unlikely to get the joke.

 It's Takumi Saito. Although cult film fans know him from Nishimura and Iguchi films, he actually has a huge female fanbase in Japan where women love him for his romantic roles and know nothing about his appearances in small budget Iguchi/Nishimura films. Tag was actually strongly advertised for female audiences and Saito's surprise appearance (he is uncredited despite it being an important role) would be quite a shock in this context.

 

 

[FilmMomatic]

I tried really hard not to spoil it, especially when I really wanted to. Haha. And you're right about Takumi Saito, it was quite a surprise, and a delight. I might be exaggerating my praise but it is the only Japanese movie that surprised me so far. Well that and The Curtain Rises, because I thought that film was going to be terrible.

 

Thanks for the praise, Takuma. Really appreciate it and I really liked reading your film reviews as well.

Edited October 15, 2015 by FilmMomatic

[One Armed Boxer]

The Japanese release will be hitting shelves on 20th November, as per usual, no English subs - 

 

http://www.yesasia.com/global/tag-2015-blu-ray-premium-edition-japan-version/1045397076-0-0-0-en/info.html

 

http://www.yesasia.com/global/tag-2015-dvd-premium-edition-japan-version/1045397056-0-0-0-en/info.html

[Takuma]

My BD arrived today and bloody hell, the bonus disc runs 234 minutes. For a moment I though they threw Love Exposure in as a bonus. There's a 2 hour making of documentary which seemed fun... Sono and Nishimura looked excited like little boys as they were working on the outrageous gore effects. Also, Tak Sakaguchi doing a lot of action work and stunt doubling. The rest of the extras are interviews and event footage (plus trailers on disc 1, and a few photo cards inside the case... probably limited to the first pressing).

 

 

 

[Sheng]

 

Caught TAG the other day on the big screen and felt this nightmarishly absurd lil’ flick might as well be called “Mitsuko Runs”.  Coz that’s what lead actress Reina Triendl (and her alter egos) did almost nonstop throughout the film: running. There’s a lot of fairly amusing comic book action here, a pity that Sono resorts to unbelievably tacky and cheap-ass CGI to stage it  (And no, it did not compliment the breezy style of the film, as some would probably have it. Some of this shit just looked borderline idiotic).

A lot of the visuals are expectedly inventive and, as has been pointed out by Takuma already, the many aerial tracking shots don’t fail to impress either. One particularly great scene catches scores of girls stampeding out of the school and being sniped at by some deranged machine gun and rocket launcher wielding teachers. But again, the impact of these shots is somewhat marred by fake explosions and truly bad looking muzzle flashes.

Of course, this fairly short chase film does have its moments and we’re treated once again to many of the expected Sion-isms:  out-of-the-blue violence, joyfully OTT blasphemy (a church filled with half-naked hussies at a gory wedding), very cool sound design, great editing choices, plus peek-a-panty shots galore.

Still, definitely the weakest of all the Sono films I’ve seen so far. And no, I do not subscribe to the reductionist “woman as man’s plaything” reading put forward in Andrew Mack’s ‘Twitch’ review (that kicked-off a pretty laughable misogyny debate). I just honestly don’t think that TAG could count as more than a momentary fun, ‘fuck-what-it-all-means’ deviation for Sono. Then again, it may also be seen as a sign that the man’s spreading himself a bit too thin these days.

 

Edited December 7, 2015 by Sheng

[Takuma]

 Still, definitely the weakest of all the Sono films I’ve seen so far.

 

Considering Sono hasn't been all that great in the recent years, I'd actually rank Tag as one of his better onces since Love Exposure. Let's see.

1. Love Exposure (2008)

2. Hazard (2005)

3. Noriko's Dinner Table (2005)

4. Suicide Club (2001)

5. Cold Fish (2010)

6. Tokyo Tribe (2014)

7. Exte: Hair Extensions (2007)

8. Strange Circus (2005)

9. Tag (2015)

10. Love & Peace (2015)

11. The Room (1992)

12. Bad Film (1995/2014)

13. Bicycle Sighs (1990)

14. Keiko desu kedo (1997)

15. Himizu (2011)

16. Why Don't You Play in Hell (2013)

17. The Virgin Psychics (2015)

18. I Am Sono Sion! (1985)

19. Guilty of Romance (2011)

20. The Land of Hope (2012)

21. Shinjuku Swan

 

 But again, the impact of these shots is somewhat marred by fake explosions and truly bad looking muzzle flashes.

 

You got that half right, but the explosions are actually real. But I know exactly what you're saying. Some of the early scenes have so many bad CGI effects that you don't notice when a real effect is placed between them. In this case, yes, the muzzle flashes are all CGI and the guns look pretty fake, and since they dominate that scene that's what you'll remember about it. This is why I prefer the film's second half which has much less CGI.

You see this problem even in big Hollywood films. Furious 7 had a couple of real stunts which I thought were CGI, because the image was so processed and so CGI enhanced that the general impression became completely fake. It's just stupid that you perform a great stunt and then you hide it under CGI enhancements.

 

 

More behind the scene screencaps

Tak Sakaguchi training the girls

Sakaguchi directing action scene. Note: the girl on bottom middle is actually a middle aged guy...

See?

Sono and Nishimura

Nishimura brought his truck

Nishimura at work

Here as well (with Sakaguchi)

Lovely head and arm explosion

Run Mitsuko

The last three caps contain spoilers, so see then only if you've seen the film. More Nishimura effects

edit: the damn forum won't let me post images as links... it automatically shows the images no matter what I do. So here's what I will do. I will add the word "REMOVE" to each link in order to break the link. To see the image, click on the link and remove the word "REMOVE" from it and then refresh.

https://sketchesofcinema.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/ta11REMOVE.jpg
https://sketchesofcinema.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/ta12REMOVE.jpg
https://sketchesofcinema.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/ta13REMOVE.jpg

 

 

 

Edited December 8, 2015 by Takuma

[Sheng]

 

Considering Sono hasn't been all that great in the recent years, I'd actually rank Tag as one of his better onces since Love Exposure. Let's see.

1. Love Exposure (2008)

2. Hazard (2005)

3. Noriko's Dinner Table (2005)

4. Suicide Club (2001)

5. Cold Fish (2010)

6. Tokyo Tribe (2014)

7. Exte: Hair Extensions (2007)

8. Strange Circus (2005)

9. Tag (2015)

10. Love & Peace (2015)

11. The Room (1992)

12. Bad Film (1995/2014)

13. Bicycle Sighs (1990)

14. Keiko desu kedo (1997)

15. Himizu (2011)

16. Why Don't You Play in Hell (2013)

17. The Virgin Psychics (2015)

18. I Am Sono Sion! (1985)

19. Guilty of Romance (2011)

20. The Land of Hope (2012)

21. Shinjuku Swan

 

Have only half a dozen of these in my collection and seen maybe a couple more; nothing that pre-dates SUICIDE CLUB though. Been curious about NORIKO'S DINNER for some time and keen to pick it up, but I'm wary of hunting down old DVD's these days; hope it'll surface on BD soon. TAG would sit at the end of my list. Think Sono's most perfectly realized film was COLD FISH, that's up there with Pang Ho Cheung's DREAM HOME (not a bad comparism because Pang is an equally gifted maverick director who refuses categorization.He is more consistent though!)

 

You see this problem even in big Hollywood films. Furious 7 had a couple of real stunts which I thought were CGI, because the image was so processed and so CGI enhanced that the general impression became completely fake. It's just stupid that you perform a great stunt and then you hide it under CGI enhancements.

 

True. I realized something like this when I watched the 'Making Of' feature of the MAD MAX reboot. Thought some of that shit was wacked-out CGI when infact it was real stunts and real vehicles crashing, but so processed and CG-enhanced that you could easily be fooled. 

 

 

Edited December 8, 2015 by Sheng

[Takuma]

Been curious about NORIKO'S DINNER for some time and keen to pick it up, but I'm wary of hunting down old DVD's these days; hope it'll surface on BD soon.

Don't hold your breath. Third Window Films' Adam Torel recently said that he has no plans to release older Sono titles as there are no HD materials available for them.

 

[mpm74]

We just posted a new Review for TAG. Enjoy.

http://cityonfire.com/tag-2015-review-sion-sono/

 

[One Armed Boxer]

For those frustrated with the recent DVD only stateside release of 'Tag', the good news is Eureka! are releasing it in the UK on dual format Blu-ray and DVD on November 20th - 

[DrNgor]

I had a really bad case of insomnia last night/this morning, so I turned on TV, went to Youtube, and typed in "J-Horror" and looked for something at random to watch. It ended up being this little headscratcher. In one of the great opening scenes of all time: we begin with a two buses full of Japanese high school girls in uniform on their way to a field trip sorts. One of the girls, Mitsuko, is ignoring her colleagues' joking around in favor of writing poetry. When she drops her pen, she kneels down to pick it up. Suddenly, an invisible force slices the buses--and all her colleagues--in half. A blood-spattered Mitsuko wanders down the road trying to warn others, only to witness them get sliced in half, too. She eventually escapes the entity and makes her way to school, where we join Mitsuko for a particularly surreal odyssey through time, space and reality.

We eventually get an explanation (of sorts) for what's happening, although it raises even more questions than it answers. But this is a movie that features pig-headed bridegrooms, teachers with machine guns, a crocodile chomping on a young girl's crotch, and more gore than you can shake a stick at. That last item may entice some viewers, although the CGI blood is pretty dire and may take a lot of viewers out of the film. At face value, the movie makes no sense. If you can decipher the explanation given hastily at the end, there's a second layer to chomp on. More astute viewers can find a third layer about the real world, societal demands and expectations, and other things--for most of the film, I thought it was about Mitsuko's coming to terms with her own lesbianism, although the final explanation made me question that. 

After finishing the movie, I read some of the IMDB reviews. A handful of reviwers pointed this out as a reason why Asian girls are more beautiful than Western girls: no unnecessary piercings, no tattoos, no dyed hair, and no obesity. I'm pretty sure that's a gross overgeneralization of both sides of the coin. And since one of the themes of the movie *may* be dealing with objectification, it's sort of ironic that Western male viewers would walk away from the movie doing just that.

[Super Ninja]

20 minutes ago, DrNgor said:

Tag (Japan, 2015: Sion Sono) - I had a really bad case of insomnia last night/this morning, so I turned on TV, went to Youtube, and typed in "J-Horror" and looked for something at random to watch. It ended up being this little headscratcher. In one of the great opening scenes of all time: we begin with a two buses full of Japanese high school girls in uniform on their way to a field trip sorts. One of the girls, Mitsuko, is ignoring her colleagues' joking around in favor of writing poetry. When she drops her pen, she kneels down to pick it up. Suddenly, an invisible force slices the buses--and all her colleagues--in half. A blood-spattered Mitsuko wanders down the road trying to warn others, only to witness them get sliced in half, too. She eventually escapes the entity and makes her way to school, where we join Mitsuko for a particularly surreal odyssey through time, space and reality.

We eventually get an explanation (of sorts) for what's happening, although it raises even more questions than it answers. But this is a movie that features pig-headed bridegrooms, teachers with machine guns, a crocodile chomping on a young girl's crotch, and more gore than you can shake a stick at. That last item may entice some viewers, although the CGI blood is pretty dire and may take a lot of viewers out of the film. At face value, the movie makes no sense. If you can decipher the explanation given hastily at the end, there's a second layer to chomp on. More astute viewers can find a third layer about the real world, societal demands and expectations, and other things--for most of the film, I thought it was about Mitsuko's coming to terms with her own lesbianism, although the final explanation made me question that. 

After finishing the movie, I read some of the IMDB reviews. A handful of reviwers pointed this out as a reason why Asian girls are more beautiful than Western girls: no unnecessary piercings, no tattoos, no dyed hair, and no obesity. I'm pretty sure that's a gross overgeneralization of both sides of the coin. And since one of the themes of the movie *may* be dealing with objectification, it's sort of ironic that Western male viewers would walk away from the movie doing just that.

I've seen Tag and didn't like it much. Other than perhaps Cold Fish (2010), nothing Sono directed in the post Love Exposure period has had the impact of his earlier films. I guess we'll never get another Suicide Club (2001), and Love Exposure (2008), well, that's once in a lifetime movie.

[DrNgor]

52 minutes ago, Super Ninja said:

I've seen Tag and didn't like it much. Other than perhaps Cold Fish (2010), nothing Sono directed in the post Love Exposure period has had the impact of his earlier films. I guess we'll never get another Suicide Club (2001), and Love Exposure (2008), well, that's once in a lifetime movie.

I'm very much a literal, face-value kind of guy, so I couldn't capture Tag's pretentions on a single viewing. Reading other reviews of it, I have a better idea of what Sono wanted to accomplish. But to do so, he ventures into Cuties and Kids territory of lovingly showing the thing you condemn before turning around and tut-tutting it and the viewer for wanting it in the first place. And because the message is hidden under several layers of WTF, the sort of people who could most use the message probably won't just not get it, they may walk away with the opposite understanding, judging from the IMDB reviews I read.

[One Armed Boxer]

On 12/7/2020 at 2:26 AM, DrNgor said:

Reading other reviews of it, I have a better idea of what Sono wanted to accomplish. But to do so, he ventures into Cuties and Kids territory of lovingly showing the thing you condemn before turning around and tut-tutting it and the viewer for wanting it in the first place. 

This was also my take on it, which I mentioned in my comments on Zack's review over at COF (check them out here). It was a smart piece of filmmaking, although definitely not without its faults. You can't blame Sono though for certain audiences not grasping the concept. He pulls a similar plot device off with his contribution to Nikkatsu's series of Roman Porno revivals, the suitably titled 'Antiporno'.